Product Improvements Coming Soon

[mindy]

Hey folks! I’m excited to give you some information about a series of product improvements we’re working on over the next several months. Everything we’re looking at has two goals in mind: helping you get more patrons, and making sure the patrons you have are happy and sticking with your membership.

To tee up this project, we’ve spent the past few months talking to patrons and creators, and analyzing data, to give us some clues about where we can have the most impact. And in the process, we’ve uncovered some things that creators can do to reach those goals, and some areas where Patreon can help.

In this blog series, we’ll share our learnings and plans, starting with the things Patreon will work on to help you get and keep more happy patrons.

Your creator page

We sat down with potential patrons to get their feedback on the current creator page and tested a few concepts, and here’s what we’ve learned:

1. The page as we’ve designed it is hard to read and understand, especially on mobile.
2. The About section is too long in most cases.
3. The tiers are pushed way over to the side, and you have to scroll a lot to read all of them and understand what’s being offered.
4. Also in general, the page is trying to do too many jobs. It’s trying to explain to potential patrons what membership is, and what you as the creator are offering. And it’s trying to be the home where you deliver posts and benefits to those that are already patrons.

What if we tried something different — a public page for non patrons, and a separate page for patrons only?

Based on our research, we think we can help you get more patrons by tailoring the page for non-patrons to be more streamlined and readable, especially on mobile devices. So that’s what we are going to work on in the next couple months.

But rather than just rolling out a whole new design at once, we’re going to start slowly, with gradual changes that we can test before moving forward. Starting this month, if you’re logged out of your account you may notice that your page looks a bit different, because we’re trying some small tweaks that will only appear to non-patrons.

For example, we’d like to test a new placement for tiers that makes them easier to see, as well as an expandable About section, so people aren’t overwhelmed by too much text. These changes will only be visible to a fraction of the non-patrons that visit your page, which allows us to measure the impact of the changes, and ensures that they actually work to grow your business. Once we see that something is working, we’ll roll it out to everyone, and we’ll keep you informed along the way.

Finding and enjoying benefits

Another thing we learned is that many patrons have a hard time finding the benefits they signed up for. For instance, new patrons often have to scroll through dozens of posts before finding the exclusive content they’re looking for. We discovered that some patrons were having trouble accessing their creators’ Discord communities, logging in to Patreon, and retrieving their membership benefits, in general. We also learned from analyzing data that if a patron is going to leave, they’re probably going to leave in their first month.

Based on these findings, we plan to improve the post-pledge experience, so it feels like patrons have unlocked a world of benefits that are easy to find and to access. We’ll test Google Single Sign-on to improve login issues. And we’ll test different approaches to helping patrons discover posts they’ll love.

We are taking special care to make sure we don’t change anything that will confuse your current patrons. We want to make finding things easier and more obvious, without disrupting what patrons are used to. Our goal is to improve patron retention (with a special focus on that first month following a pledge to a creator).

Sharing Learnings

As this work progresses, we’ll share what we learn with you through this blog series, through email, and here, the Patreon Community forum. We hope you’re as excited as we are to make Patreon better for you and your patrons.

Please let us know any feedback or questions you have about this update as we’d love to hear it

[dekilah]

I’m definitely curious to see how this goes!

[Watsup]

These sound like great steps, looking forward to them.

[myrrh]

Curious to see how this works!

[Christa_P]

I’m really excited for these changes. I already like to log out and check how my public page looks often so I’ll keep an eye out.

[soerenvogelsang]

@mindy

Your creator page

We sat down with potential patrons to get their feedback on the current creator page and tested a few concepts, and here’s what we’ve learned:

1. The page as we’ve designed it is hard to read and understand, especially on mobile.
2. The About section is too long in most cases.
3. The tiers are pushed way over to the side, and you have to scroll a lot to read all of them and understand what’s being offered.
4. Also in general, the page is trying to do to

oh yeah!
Sounds awesome. Two different Pages is a great idea. Also that Patreons directly see an impact, a changing, when they become Patron.

[johnnfour]

Nice. Looking forward to future learnings and tweaks!

[deciphermedia]

This all sounds great. Excited to see it all happen!

[artbyemilyhare]

Sounds very interesting!

[mindy]

Last month we kicked off some product improvements with two goals in mind: helping you get more patrons, and making sure the patrons you have are happy and sticking with your membership. If you haven’t seen Part 1 of this blog series, check it out.

The creator page updates

We’re back with part 2 in this series with great news! We tested some changes on the creator page that were shown to non-patrons. After gathering enough data to be certain of the effects, we saw that one of the versions netted on average a 9% increase in patron conversion! That means this version of the page works better than the current creator page at getting people to become patrons.

We want all Patreon creators to benefit from that higher conversion rate. So starting today, we will gradually roll it out to all creators over the next few months, still carefully monitoring the results. And we’ll continue to improve on the design with new tests to make it even better. This only affects the page that non patrons see ; your patrons will not notice any change to your creator page unless they visit it when they’re logged out. Here is what the new page looks like:

It showcases your benefits first and foremost so people can easily see what you’re offering and compare your tiers at a glance. It only shows the first 3 tiers by default because we’ve found that is easier for potential patrons to digest visually, but they can click to see all tiers. We’re excited to get this page makeover out to all creators over time, so everyone can enjoy a higher patron conversion rate. But that’s not the end of the story. We think we can make it even better, and are working towards a better way to showcase your tiers, give you the ability to highlight a tier of your choice, and to add a short welcome message above your tiers. We will continue fine tuning and improving, so stay tuned for more design tests and news on this.

A welcome win for patron retention!

Another test we ran this past month also showed positive results: customizing the Thank You page. When new patrons pledge, they land on a Thank You page. We updated that page to include a list of the benefits they have access to in their tier, and a button that takes them back to your creator page to see the posts they’ve unlocked. This produced a measurable improvement in patron retention, with 5% fewer patrons canceling within their first week! Based on this success, we’ve rolled it out to everyone. Eventually we’d like to give every creator the option to customize the message on this page for each of your tiers. Here’s a before and after:

What we’ve learned that you can use today

Our data shows that patrons are most likely to leave in their first month. The test above tells us that we can keep more patrons around if they have a good experience right away, like finding your posts more easily, or having an interaction with you. So how do you welcome new patrons to your membership? Are there things you can do to make them feel even more special?

One key stat: creators who post patron-only content at least twice a month have higher patron retention. This cadence means that new patrons are more likely to see content in their first month that feels valuable to them. So if you’re not posting at least twice a month, try it and see what happens. It doesn’t always need to be finished content. A friendly update works, too.

Another way to make new patrons feel welcome is to send a personal thank you when they sign up. You can do this via Patreon direct messaging, or to make it really special, send a quick personalized video from your mobile phone using our Bonjoro integration. Our CEO and creator-in-chief Jack Conte swears by this method. To see him describe how it works, check out the video from September’s episode of Hang Time (skip to 18:50 in the video to get to this section).

[simrell]

I’m so so disappointed that despite all of the feedback given on the forum, you’re keeping this sloppy new layout. It still hides my post profitable tiers, it’s still a huge empty space that looks like it loaded improperly, and it completely disregards the effort many patrons put into making their tiers into eye catching images.

edit: an example of an unreadable tier. why give us the option of uploading images to our tiers if you’re going to make them unusable?

the “show more levels” button is hard to find and hard to see.

Did you even listen to our feedback? Or did you just see a 9% increase and figured it MUST be from the new layout? Couldn’t have possibly come from anything else unrelated? I really wish this were an optional change or at least have it be functional and let us arrange it to best suit different creators instead of just permanently effecting our income like that. I’m so disappointed in Patreon.

[madameberry]

Honestly?

Why on earth were these changes rolled out with no further iteration after all of the feedback we’ve given in this and other threads?

That’s really all I want to know at this point. =/

[Christa_P]

Thanks Mindy.

I’m really concerned with how quick and urgent this testing seems to be moving toward “roll out to all creators” status. This quote in particular:

“After gathering enough data to be certain of the effects, we saw that one of the versions netted on average a 9% increase in patron conversion! That means this version of the page works better than the current creator page at getting people to become patrons.”

I don’t think that’s necessarily what that means, though! Was this really a long enough time to pinpoint that it was definitely new creator pages that resulted in that 9% uptic? Could there really be no other factors? I would be curious to learn more about average analytics for everyone. I know I had a lot more visits to my page but people spent a lot less time on it in the last month. I can’t help but wonder if it’s because my About section is now buried and has a “Show more” link instead of friendly, welcoming text that I wanted visitors to see upfront.

I think it may have been better to let us linger with the old layout for longer while all of the creator feedback was analyzed. There is a lot of feedback. This layout works for some but for many others it doesn’t, and I don’t think that 9% number is enough to negate how uncomfortable a lot of creators are feeling about their voices not being heard.

Is it possible to retain the old layout or have a choice for our own pages while testing for other features is still in progress?

[mindy]

Thanks for all the posts in here, I will continue sharing your thoughts with the team.

I do want to reiterate that this is not the end of the story for this page design. We will continue to improve the page with your feedback.

We’ve heard concern that the design has too much white space, and that higher priced tiers are more hidden. But the results are clear: this design is working better to get new patrons and it has not decreased the average pledge amount. While we work on further improvements, we’d like to give everyone the benefit of a higher conversion rate.

We’re working towards giving you the ability to highlight a tier of your choice above the fold, and to add a short welcome message above your tier, as well as looking at the overall design and use of empty space. We will continue fine tuning, so stay tuned for more news on this and, as always, please share your thoughts and feedback.

[simrell]

But what’s so strange and frustrating to us is that this went live without changing any of the key complaints we had. These are fixes that should have happened and been tested well before it rolled out to everyone.

[YuuriVoice]

One of my favorite things about Patreon has been the emphasis on putting the creator first. I’m seeing flashes of Jack talking about how Patreon wants to work for the creator, be the front runner in being a creator first platform, insert charismatic Jack monologue here.

This is not that. Boasting a 9% increase across the board is all well and good, but there are a lot of variables there. We’re coming into Fall, while Summer is historically slow season for online content creators, be it YouTubers, Streamers, etc. and I’ve noticed that same trend in my own content. I’d be curious if there have been similar bumps like this in past years on Patreon and if it compares to this particular instance.

And even if the 9% increase is directly related to this new layout, this completely disregards the creators who are negatively impacted by these changes. There seems to be a clear understanding that this one size fits all method is far from ideal, so I’m wondering why Patreon is rushing to push this change out when giving it a little more time to bake would not only make the product better, but let creators utilize those changes in the way they feel is most effective.

I would love to know the click-thru stats on the Patreon “show more” buttons in relation to tiers and about sections, because I have some very serious doubts. If the idea is to put what you’re offering front and center, why in the same breath are we hiding a significant portion of what we’re offering? Thankfully my content on Patreon is meant to lead people to upgrading their pledges by seeing locked posts and such, but I really think hiding those tiers would negatively impact most creators because in general people do not read carefully and a show more button is easily overlooked. Particularly if you have tier images + descriptions. It’s almost like being punished for having details and eye catching features in this case.

I understand that in a business minded view, that 9% increase is very sexy, but I don’t think it’s nearly attractive enough to risk the potential damage that this change will do to some other creators. These changes seem heavily in favor of creators with no more than three tiers and a very brief about section. Congratulations to creators who fall into that category, but there are many who do not.